The Chronic Curmudgeon

I dunno, I was always one for believing the Great Pumpkin invented the world.

And then gave gifts to all the good little boys and girls at halloween.

pretty funny.

I tried to blog out the music thing, but when I went to publish, Blogger was down and it screwed it all up.
Im not going to re-do it.

I did post something about Bush though, if your interested.

I think I will start a Flying Spaghetti Monsterism faction around here.

Your a little hard on the ID guys. I don't think you have their arguments down as much as you think you do either. ID is not simply creationism dressed up in a suit. In fact, it is not specifically Christian. ID claims that life, at its most basic, is too complicated, too packed with information (DNA), too designed, to be the result of the random happenings of the universe.

You should do your homework--read some of the ID literature. I reccomend Dembski or Michael Behe.

You should do your homework--read some of the ID literature. I reccomend Dembski or Michael Behe.

Or you could just make the shit up as you go along and throw the word "science" around a lot. It amounts to the same thing.

Sorry, Jeremy - not buying the argument that "ID is not specifically Christian." Were that the case, the fundies wouldn't be running around trying to stuff it into the schools. After all, if we were suggesting that it had been Buddha or heaven forbid, Allah who had been the cause of the random happenings of the universe, the evangelicals wouldn't allow it within 500 yards of a school.

After losing in not only the judicial courts but in the court of public opinion, over and over again, in their efforts to force Christianity into public schools, the evangelicals had to find another entree into the schools with their agenda - and ID is it.

However, as you requested I did a Net search for reviews of the work of the authors you recommend. Here's an analysis of Behe:

http://www.philoonline.org/library/shanks_4_1.htm

"Behe's design inference in fact exhibits an appeal to ignorance. He cannot see how irreducible complexity could have arisen in a natural, unguided manner, so it must have arisen in an unnatural, supernatural manner, though we know not how, by whom, when, or for what purpose... Behe has made an extraordinary claim, and its validation will require extraordinary evidence. Behe makes no attempt to meet this essential, evidential requirement."

And here's one on the work of both Dembski and Behe:

http://chem.tufts.edu/ais/DesignYesIntelligentNo.html

"In summary, it seems to me that the major arguments of Intelligent Design theorists are neither new nor compelling. a) It is simply not true that science does not address all Aristotelian causes, whenever design needs to be explained.

b) While irreducible complexity is indeed a valid criterion to distinguish between intelligent and non-intelligent design, these are not the only two possibilities, and living organisms are not irreducibly complex (e.g., see Shanks and Joplin 1999).

c) The complexity-specification criterion is actually met by natural selection, and cannot therefore provide a way to distinguish intelligent from non-intelligent design.

d) If supernatural design exists at all (but where is the evidence or compelling logic?), this is certainly not of the kind that most religionists would likely subscribe to, and it is indistinguishable from the technology of a very advanced civilization.

Therefore, Behe's, Dembski's, and other creationists' (e.g., Johnson 1997) claims that science should be opened to supernatural explanations and that these should be allowed in academic as well as public school curricula is unfounded and based on a misunderstanding of both design in nature and of what the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution (Mayr and Provine 1980) is all about."

There were a bunch of others like this, but to cite them would be belaboring the point. The bottom line is, the reputable scientific community finds serious flaws in Behe's and Dembski's work. It would seem to me that Behe & Dembski are indeed good examples of what ID is all about: subjectively assessing data and theory in order to make it fit with one's theological beliefs.

And while both they and you are certainly entitled to your beliefs, I think I'll stick to what the scientific community has to say. ID at its core still rests on faith - explaining nature as the result of the hand of some intelligence at work still requires, at the end of the day, FAITH that such an intelligence exists, rather than demonstrable or observable proof. You have to be willing to believe in a higher intelligence in order to accept the scientifically suspect premise that such a being is exercising its influence over evolution or nature.

And since the very basis of science is to accept only what one can demonstrate, observe, or prove, it seems that ID, while a very interesting subject for a philosophy department or theology course, fails the test when it comes to science. And if it's not science, it should not be taught as such.

I do appreciate you stopping by though, in all sincerity. Be well, and have a good rest of the weekend.

so...you've finally been touched by his glorious noodles, eh? ;-)

The FSM has made the Kansas City Star!

Posted on Mon, Aug. 15, 2005

Life created by … ‘His Holy Noodleness’?

TOPEKA — According to Bobby Henderson, Kansas school children need to learn about the world’s true intelligent designer: the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Henderson, 24, is a recent physics graduate who lives in Corvallis, Ore. He created the Flying Spaghetti Monster as a way to parody the intelligent design movement. He sent a letter to Kansas Board of Education members demanding that his “faith” in “His Holy Noodleness” be incorporated in Kansas’ new science education standards.

The board is set to vote this fall on new science standards that call for a more critical look at evolution.

Two board members who oppose the new standards, Sue Gamble of Shawnee and Janet Waugh of Kansas City, Kan., replied. Both thanked Henderson for the humor.
— David Klepper/The Star